I am a product of a Disney family.  I, like many kids, grew up watching Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White.  I am a firm believer in Happily Ever After.  I believe a dream is a wish your heart makes, that someday my prince will come, and that I walked with him once upon a dream.  More often than not, this leads me to continuously be looking for my own fairytale.  This was never more true than when I was leaving my nightmare of a job a few months ago.

My last week I wrote an email to all of my client contacts letting them know that I would be leaving and that it had been a pleasure to work with them.  I received some very nice responses; many saying I had always been so helpful, that I would be missed, and one touching statement from the big boss there telling me that it would be hard to fill my shoes.  And with all these uplifting messages I got one very interesting note.  I had worked very closely with a lot of people there, but the sender of this email was not one of them.  He was someone I spoke to only a handful of times, so I was a little surprised.  He let me know that he is originally from Boston, that he’d been in LA for 15 years, but was moving back this summer.  He said he was currently in Boston snowed in and proceeded to give me his personal email address.  To say I was taken aback would be an understatement.  Was this man interested in me, or was he just being nice?  I responded about the weather and politely inquired as to why he was moving back.  When he wrote his response (no mention of a wife/girlfriend, which is what I was fishing for!), he also mentioned he was on LinkedIn.  Of course I headed right over to check him out.  I sent him a request and let him know I did so.  He accepted and said “cool pic!”  There was nothing exciting about my LinkedIn picture, it was a picture of me sitting at my desk at work, but now I was sure he was interested!  In the background of the picture there was an autographed photo of Jim Rice, which he mentioned as well.  We emailed a little more talking about the Sox, as all good Bostonians do, and then he reiterated his personal email address and provided a SECOND personal email address!

Well, I figured we might as well stop emailing each other from work addresses, considering my access to that email was almost up, and I switched over to the personal ones.  The response I got from him was almost immediate and was signed ~J.  The following night we were going out to celebrate my last night at my job and I invited him along.  Unfortunately he was already going to be out of town, but he told me 3 times that he was so mad he was going to miss it.  He said he would love to have met up.  Over the course of the next couple of days I got emails from ~J wishing me a good last day at work, telling me that he wished he were out with me & my coworkers, telling me he almost called me on my last day because it would be the last chance he would have to do so, etc.  Clearly this guy was interested.  He wasn’t going to be back in Boston for over a month, but I didn’t have a problem with that, it would just provide more of a chance to get to know each other prior to meeting.  And meet we would because he had asked if we could get together when he was back in town.  I told him of course.  After about a week he even told me he was pushing his move up a few months.

We continued our emails and they started to get somewhat lengthy.  Since he was in LA he would write to me at night and I would get it in the morning.  One of these nights he sent me a drunken email.  He told me that he had been talking about me that night.  His buddy had come over to watch the Bruins game and he was telling him how excited he was to be moving back to Boston and how happy he was that we had been messaging.  He said sometimes he just wanted to text me (we hadn’t exchanged numbers at this point).  He told me I was on his mind.  Could this be my fairytale?  What could be a more romantic notion than discovering love because I finally decided to leave a bad job?

Despite my proclivity for Happily Ever After, I was being smart and not getting ahead of myself.  I knew I hadn’t met this guy yet and my reliable gut doesn’t actually get a feeling until I see someone face to face.  Still, I was enjoying talking with ~J so I gave him my number and we started texting.  One night I was at a friend’s house and I was texting him throughout the night.  I had told him that I needed a refill on a drink and he said that, had he been there, he would have gotten it for me.  He told me he’d never let me down, promise.  He told me he wished he were there.  Throughout all our conversations I noticed he wasn’t bringing up his move.  Finally one day I asked when he was going to be back in town.  He said he was trying to figure that out, as he was having it coincide with a work trip.  A few days later we were texting and I mentioned a video that I had emailed him that he never commented on.  He said he thought he had, I said he hadn’t.  And that was it.  I didn’t hear from him again.  The last couple of times we talked I had been the one who initiated it, so I was waiting for him to initiate something to show his interest.  When I didn’t hear from him I figured he wasn’t anymore, or that he was so mixed up with his move (was he even moving??) that he didn’t have the time in his life.

I was disappointed and confused.  How did we go from him saying I was on his mind, that he wished he were with me, and that he couldn’t wait to be back in Boston to just nothing?  On one hand I had gotten to the point where I was tired of waiting for him to get to town so we could meet, and a little annoyed that he was never bringing up when he was actually moving.  On the other hand I had put so much into our communications that I felt like we needed to meet up just to see if there was a connection there.  But I was still refusing to get in touch first.  If he was interested, he needed to reach out.  So I went on living my life sans ~J.  A month passed.  Every now and then I would wonder what happened, but I kept telling myself that he just didn’t have his stuff together and, at the end of the day, that’s probably not the right person for me.

Two weeks ago I decided ~J would make for a good blog post.  I told a friend, who was familiar with the situation, that I was going to write it the following week.  Then, low and behold, I woke up 2 days later to find that ~J had sent me a few texts at 4am!  He sent a picture of the seaport, he said he knew I was mad at him, but he was in Boston and was thinking about me.  He said he missed me and included a crying emoji.  I was dumbstruck!  Why would he think I was mad at him?  Did he think I was mad that I hadn’t heard from him in a month, or had he thought I hadn’t talked to HIM in a month because I was mad?!  I wrote back and asked why he thought I was mad.  He didn’t respond.  The following day I wrote him again.  I said I wasn’t sure why he thought I was mad, but I was glad he was enjoying his time in Boston.  To that he responded.  He said he had thought I was mad about the video and because he hadn’t heard from me since.  I told him I hadn’t been mad at all!  He said he was glad, and we proceeded to catch up.  I asked when he would be leaving and he said he was leaving the following week.

Here’s the part where you think I’m going to say we met up, right?  Wrong.  He never asked me out, he never even came close!  ~J has now left Boston without ever having made an effort to try to schedule something with me.  At this point I am done talking to him, because I wasn’t really looking for a pen pal.  He was all guns blazing when he was 3,000 miles away, making plans and typing sweet nothings.  But all of a sudden he’s in the same city and he’s, what, scared?  Shy?  A coward?  Again, I don’t understand it at all.  Yes, I am well aware that his 4am texts were most likely drunken messages, but why send them if you’re not interested in meeting up?  You’re thinking about me?  You miss me?  I’m right here!

If I’m being completely honest, it rubbed me the wrong way that he thought I was mad and, for over a month, he didn’t try to contact me to smooth things over.  He said I didn’t get in touch with him for a month but, last I checked, my phone is able to receive texts, not just send them.  What kind of man is he?  Clearly not one that I need or want in my life.  I want someone who, when an argument happens (even one he made up in his head), isn’t going to run away and hide under a rock until he’s drunk enough to reach out again.  Suffice it to say, I’m going to continue my search for Prince Charming.  I’ll find him someday.  He’ll love me at once, the way he did once upon a dream.